It appears that voters throughout Alameda County will be asked in June to extend a utility users tax that brings the county $9.1 million a year to pay for services in unincorporated areas.

It would be the third time voters in cities and unincorporated areas decide the fate of the 5.5 percent tax on telephone, cell phone, gas and electric bills.

Only residents and business operators in communities such as Ashland, Castro Valley, Cherryland, Fairview, San Lorenzo, Sunol and unincorporated areas near Livermore and Pleasanton pay the tax.

Ken Gross, an analyst who coordinates the county’s budget, said the current tax authorization — approved by voters in 2000 — ends June 30, 2009.

“Since there’s no 2009 election, we have to go to voters this year,” he said. “We haven’t gone to the Board of Supervisors yet to put it on the ballot, but we are looking at the June (2008) primary.”

Currently, the $9.1 million is split among the sheriff’s department, at $5.5 million; county library, at $2.2 million; and community development agency, at $1.3 million.

The community development agency provides planning, redevelopment and code enforcement services.

County supervisors adopted the tax for unincorporated areas in December 1992, after the state began shifting local property taxes to education programs. The money was to subsidize county services hurt by the tax shift.

The four-year tax first was imposed in March 1993. However, supervisors placed the tax on the November 1996 ballot, because of a 1995 state Supreme Court decision that required voter approval for such taxes.

In 1996, the county counsel’s office decided that the court ruling required county voters to decide the issue, even if only residents and business operators outside city limits are taxed.

The reasoning: All constituents of the agency levying the tax must vote to extend it. All the voters in the county are supervisors’ constituents.

The tax was approved in 1996 and again in 2000, the latter authorized the tax for nine years.

Gross said he will be preparing information for supervisors on other local jurisdictions with utility taxes.

Supervisors would have the options of retaining or increasing the 5.5 percent tax, asking voters whether they want to periodically approve the tax or authorize it indefinitely, and expand or reduce exemptions, such as those for low-income or lifeline utility users.

County Librarian Jean Hofacket will discuss the utility tax with the Alameda County Library Advisory Commission at 7 p.m. Nov. 7 at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave.

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